Bob Singleton

Northampton based freelance photographer. Member of the British Association of Journalists (www.bajunion.org.uk)

I first picked up a camera (a Kodak 127 'Box Brownie') when I was eight and had learnt how to develop b&w film by the time I was ten. My first SLR was a second-hand Praktika TL when I was about 13/14. Over the years I learnt how to develop and print in colour and had a full colour darkroom at home until 2004 when I switched to digital, picking up a couple of hardly used Nikon D1x cameras from a retiring studio pro for a knock down price.

In the late 70s and early 80s I was booking bands, some well known, some not so. The first band I ever booked was The Boomtown Rats in 1977 for Esher College's first ever Sixth Form Conference. At the time I booked them nobody had heard of them, but by the time they appeared at the school "Looking After Number One" had got into the top 20 and the Rats had made their first TOTP appearance. I later booked acts such as The Jam, The Police, Squeeze, Black Roots, The Pretenders, The Gang of Four, Punishment of Luxury, Aswad, Fischer Z, Sad Cafe, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Tourists, Paul Young & The Q Tips, Lene Lovitch, Blondie, Hawkwind, Talking Heads, OMD, Motorhead, Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Teardrop Explodes etc. alongside the late Nick Rayns for the Student's Union at the University of East Anglia from 1978-81. I also gave The Higsons and Capitalist Music their first ever paid gigs and helped manage Zorro, a local Norwich band, for a while.

Published in The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Star (Johannesburg), The Straits Times (Singapore), South London Press, Surrey Comet, Eastern Daily Press, BBC website, Rolling Stone, NME, Metal Hammer, Rhythm, Classic Rock, Time Out and elsewhere. Former contributor to Redferns, Corbis & Getty. Current contributor to Rex Features/Shutterstock